First Encounters
by LennonMorrisonMarleyHendrix
Summary: What Peter was thinking when he first met Claire. Just a drabble.


She was diffrent. She didn't look like a care free, boy crazy, high school cheerleader. Her eyes held so much more than anyone her age should. She had a sad, knowing look, with every glance it was like she was saying _'Save me'_.

"You know, between you and me, she's not that special. Just your average teenage girl."

She smiled. She knew he'd lied, he could tell. He knew that she knew he was there about Jackie, but he didn't see any jealousy in her soft fearures. Right now she was smiling, but he could see the way her brow furrowed when she said certian words, that betrayed her innocent apperence.

"She rushed into a fire and saved a man's life, sounds kinda special to me."

He said. Her eyes meandered over the picture of Jackie in the trophy case. Her expression changed, from a look of melancholy into a look of amusement.

"Yeah, you're right. I'm jealous. She's our town hero. Me? I don't win too many popularity contests."

Her face contradicted her words. She smiled again, like she wanted to say more, but decided not to. Her eyes danced with the excitement of a secret. She bit her lip, and looked him right in the eye. He almost felt like she was trying to let him in on her secret, but he couldn't grasp what it was she wanted. She had turned to walk away. He couldn't leave it at that. He wanted to know what she wouldn't, and probably shouldn't tell him. He called after her, trying in his voice to tell her that he wanted to know, that he wanted to help.

"Hey, it gets better!"

She turned around, her eyes dancing again, but instead with her thought of 'Better'.

"What?"

"Life after high school. It gets a lot better."

Her face returned to its original melancholy expression, but she looked peaceful, not jittery like she should have been right before a big game, like the homecoming game. She turned and walked away; leaving him wondering if she really wasn't the girl he was looking for.

"You... How did you..."

He had just jumped off a building, this man, with the dark hair and lopsided smile and just launched himself off a building, and he was fine. His eyes looked wild with surprise and confusion, but there was an acute lack of fear. She wondered how he couldn't be scared.

"Where is he?"

His voice was smooth, and surprisingly calm. He was looking at her with a strange look in his eye. He seemed to by observing her, taking in every detail, almost as if, in a moment, it would all be gone. He felt light headed, probably from all the blood he's lost. She reached out and touched his leg. Her fingers send a shock rocketing through him, and his head cleared up. It was the cheerleader with a secret.

The melancholy look was gone, replaced with pure wild excitement. Her eyes flamed with adrenaline, ready for more fight. She was crouched next to him like she a cat. She appeared at ease, but if you looked hard enough, you could see she was tensed up, ready to spring.

"I don't know. He ran away before I got here."

The tone of her voice indicated that she wished he hadn't gotten away, and the look in her eyes made him scared for the man if she ever found him. They both heard sirens in the background, and she relaxed a little, but not enough so that she could easily be taken by surprise.

"Police. Go get some help, okay?"

She brought her eyes to meet his. The fire in them had disappeared. Instead he saw the opposite. He could see the world through her eyes; see it all getting washed away. Somehow, someone had managed to encase the entire ocean into her eyes, and the waves danced and circled and leaped, but were never stagnant.

"Okay. I'll be back... Hey. What's your name?"

"Peter."

"I'm Claire."

Claire. He tried to attach the name to the creature in front of him. She didn't deserve to be tethered by a name, her spirit still dancing around her eyes, her body still tensed in such a beautifully animalistic way. No, she couldn't be Claire. Claire was too simple to describe her. _Save the Cheerleader, save the world._

In that moment, she was his world. He was lost in her. How could he have not saved her, this was the one he needed to save, he was positive.

"Are you the one? By saving you, did I save the world?"

The storm in her eyes calmed, and his words seemed to have an effect on her. She relaxed, and looked less like a cornered animal, but no less feline.

"I don't know. I'm just a cheerleader."

He heard the door open. She was there. Claire was there. Her sea-foam eyes lit up when she saw him, and she smiled that secretive smile of hers. Behind her was a man, with horned glasses. He was glaring and Peter. Peter could see no resemblance between beautiful, free spirited Claire, and Horned Rimmed Glasses, who was so obousiuosy her father.

He jumped up. "Your ok!" Her eyes sparkled, and he saw the waves laying dormant in the eyes in question stir.

"Thanks to you." She gave him one of her secretive simles. He wanted to ask her, ask her what she was hiding, what she needed. He wanted to help her.

Horned Rimmed glasses stepped in front of her, blocking his view of what he had come to think of as the perfect world, from the expression, "In a perfect world."

"Mr. Patrelli." Said the man. "I'm Claire's father." It wasn't an introduction, it was a warning.

"Hi." Peter replied, opting for the safest option of introduction. Horned Rimmed Glasses smiled again, but not at all genuinely.

"You saved my little girl. I owe you my life." He was still talking in a warning tone. His words seemed like what he wanted to say, but it was all too clear that he had wished that it was not Peter, but himself that had saved Claire. Clare seemed to notice to. She rolled her eyes behind her father.

"I was just in the right place." Peter responded, but not to Horned Rimmed Glasses. He was speaking to Claire, who gave him another 'I have a secret' smile.

Horned Rimmed Glasses demanded his attention. "Maybe one day I will be in the right place. I can return the favor." Peter's eyes snapped away from Claire, and back to the man.

A sudden wave a nausea over came him, and he coughed with such a voilent force, his whole body shook.

"You feeling all right?" The older man asked, not the least bit concerned, but polite, for his daughter's sake.

Peter's eyes found Claire's concerned ones, and hiscoughing fit abruptly stopped.

He briefly wondered if it was the goddess before him or her power that'd made himstop coughing.

"Yeah," he said, a little puzzled, "I'm fine."

Claire looked up at Horned Rimmed Glasses, and simled, but it as a diffrent simle. The kind of simle that Horned Rimmed Glasses had been giving him the whole time they'd been in his holding cell. "Hey dad, can you wait outside?" She asked him, in a way that would have made him seem crul to say no.

He glanced from Claire to Peter, giving Peter a warning glare, before saying "Of course."

He began retreating out of the cell, still glaing at Peter. His looks were all to clear. _Don't try anything on my daughter, or i will kill you. She is _mine.

As soon as the guard shut the door behind him Claire turned to Peter. The blue-green oasis in her eyes was no longer still. Her eyes whirlled and jumpped with excitment and and a mischivous grin demeanded her thin pink lips.

"How long have you known?"

"Known what?" He snapped back, running his eyes up and down her very shapely body. He was having thoughts that would turn Horned Rimmed Glasses murdurous.

Her face displayed suprise at his gruff reply, but not anger or disbelief. He was trying to discourage the thoughts that he was having about her, becuase he knew it was wrong, but she was making it hard, and there were moments when he belived that she knew exactly what he was thinking.

"That your like me. You would have died if you couldn't-" Her eyes were searching his, and her voice was like a drug to him, but the logical part of his brain registered the fact that she could heal. He needed to ask her, know if she could heal before he lost control of himself, and swept her up into a passionate kiss, demanding those lips that were always in an ever changing smile do something other than torment him. If Horned Rimmed Glasses weren't on the other side of the clear glass window he might have done just that.

He bent down so he could look at her without looking down on her. She never deserved to be looked down upon. "Wait, do you-" He stopped to take a breath; he was dangerously close to her now. "Do you heal?" He said quickly, praying she hadn't noticed his breathlessness. "Is that it?" He said again, to expell the extra air he had inhaled into his lungs once he'd realized he wasn't breathing. She was nodding, her eyes locked on his the whole time.

"All this time, I thought it was just me." She said, breathily, almost joyfully. The dance in her eyes had changed, gone from mischievous to jubilant. "Now there is you."

Peter wiped his face with his hand, making sure this was really happening. There were other people like him and Nathan. There was Claire. Perfect Claire and the look that she was giving him made him want to kiss her even more. They were in this, together.

Suddenly her expression changed again. "Is that why you came for me-"She swallowed hard. "Is that why you asked me if I-" She brought her gaze up to meet his eyes again. "If I was the one?"

"I don't know, I just, just knew I had to save you," He told her. _Save the cheerleader, save the world_. Claire, the Perfect World.

She searched his face. "Why?" She asked him. He felt the urge to push a strand of hair that'd fallen into her face out of it. _Why_? Her question echoed in his head. He knew he had to answer her question, but she clouded his mind, dulled his senses. The only thing that continued to come to his mind was _because you're the Perfect World I had to save. Save the cheerleader, save the world._

"To save the world." He barely managed to croak out.

"What do I have to do with the world?"

He couldn't think. He didn't want to think. She was like his own personal heroin.

"I don't know…Yet." He smiled, suddnely very aware of how lopsided it was. He must look like an idiot. He looked down at himself, he was covered in blood, and his hair was dirty, there was a healthey layer of grime on his skin.

He realized he'd let the silence between words stretch on for a little too long, so he looked up at her, to say something, but lost the words on his tongue. She was staring at him, her expression had changed yet again, to express amazement and admeriation. His heart fluttered. She couldn't possibly be having similar thoughts to his, especially with Horrned Rimmed Glasses in view. With the thought of Claire's father, he started talking again, because if he didn't-

"But, I do know," He said, taking them both by surprise, "I wouldn't be here, if it wasn't for you. I-" He stopped, and then still hesitant said, "I think I died." There was a pregnant silence, which only lasted for a moment.

Her face broke into a radient smile, not secreative at all, just genuine amusment. "I've died before. It's no big deal." He let her have her moment, entranced by her smile, but when she saw the grim look etched onto his features, her smile faded. She looked at him, asking him with her eyes what was wrong.

"I'm not like you Cliare-" He was forced to look away from her eyes, where he could stay forever, up at Horned Rimed Glasses, who was knocking on the glass, wanting Claire to hurry. She half turned, looking extremly annoyed, and held up a finger at her father. She turned back to me, expectantly. Some small part of me was thrilled she'd told her dad to wait, just so she could keep taking to me. But the more rational side of me continued talking.

"This a…This healing thing is kinda new for me."

She looked surprised, happy, sad, and confused, all at once. God, she was so beuatifuly complicated.

"You didn't know that you were going to heal when you dove off the building?"

"No," he laughed, "Kinda stupid huh?"

"No! Not so-" she was cut off by her dad knocking on the glass again. She whirled around to face him, extremly annoyed. Her face must have shown, because he stepped back, holding up his hands.

She stood up to go. Peter's heart dropped, as he saw her head towards the door. She was leaving. He greedily licked up every detail about her, before she left. Her complicated eyes, her ever changing smile, her brow which wrinkled when she said certain words, showing the sleepless nights he was sure she'd had. The way she walked, like she had no where to be, and the way she talked, like she never said what she wanted to. And he clung to the last words she'd said to him with all his mite, determinded to never forget the way her voice sounded:

"You're totally my hero."

_I think I may have just fallen in love with you Claire Bennett_ he thought, but all he did was smile like a fool. He watched her walk away, with the melancholy look adorned so often by the small cheerleader.

A/N Haven't decided if this will be the prologue to a story of a one-shot (Originally written to be a prologue, but I can't decide- I almost never write one-shots.) Review and tell me what you think.


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